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 Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 8:11 am
META SOLO
the woman
personal challenge
April 26, 1411
Hopkin wakes to footsteps on the wagon floor.
Cautiously, he gets up and peers out of the new book bag that Wickwright has acquired from Feilim's house. At that moment, the bag opens on its own, and a bright blue eye peers through the crack. Startled, Hopkin lets out a cry and falls back, just a soft noise, but it's enough for the owner of the eye to turn the bag upside down and shake out the contents. Desperately, Hopkin tries to cling to the sides at first, but the leather is too new, too shiny and stiff to grab hold of. He falls and braces himself for impact against the hard floor, but to his surprise, he lands on something soft.
A hand, long and graceful, but not yet spindly with age. Hopkin looks up to stare into the blue eyes of Feilim Finch, who makes a strangled whimper and drops him in surprise as soon as he gets a proper look at what was in the bag. Hopkin falls to the floor with a crack, and that's all it takes for Wickwright to leap from his bed, trying to gauge the situation.
"Feilim," he spits, rushing over to see if Hopkin is unharmed, "You damn fool." Leaning over his Plague, he demands, "Hopkin, can you hear me? Can you remember everything?"
Hopkin clutches his head. He can feel a sharp, throbbing pain at the back of his bronze skull, but he nods. "Yes, Wickwright Finch, I can hear you." He pauses for longer than Wickwright would like as he tries to make the stories unfold in his head. The pain distracts him, but they are all there, neatly filed, each where it rightly belongs. "I believe I can remember everything. That is, if I've forgotten something, I cannot remember if I knew it or not." That answer is enough to satisfy Wickwright, and he quickly lifts the bandages on the back of Hopkin's head, feeling for cracks or dings. The metal is smooth and unblemished, and so Wickwright's attention returns to Feilim.
"And you," he demands, "What are you doing in here? What have you done? You could have damaged him!"
"Him!" Feilim demands, not about to let Wickwright get the upper hand of the situation. "Him, what about me? I asked you, I asked you, Uncle, from one Jawbone Man to another, whether you had a plague, and you ignored me! A question that important, you ignored me and left me no other option but to see for myself what I couldn't believe to be true!"
"You are not a Jawbone Man." Wickwright interjects furiously. "Not until I give my word."
Feilim recoils as if scalded, and stares at Wickwright as if he's never seen him before. "Who else is there but me?" he demands. "My father? My sister? What other Finch could possibly succeed you but me?"
"You may very well be my only option, Feilim Finch, but you are not a Jawbone Man until the moment I say you are. Not a second sooner, and right now, you are most certainly not a Jawbone Man! No Jawbone Man would put their predecessor's contribution at risk like this."
"This cannot be your contribution, Uncle!"
As the two Finches begin to squabble between themselves, Hopkin clutches his own head tighter, spindly metallic fingers bunching the bandages wrapped around it. The noise is getting painful to hear so he crawls himself up onto Wickwright's desk and opens the window. There, the cool wind soothes his pain somewhat, but after a moment, he hears a new, hoarser noise.
A caw.
Looking up slowly, he finds himself face to face with a crow and shrieks, a tinny whistling noise that the crow replies to with yet another sharp retort. Feilim and Wickwright look up from their squabbling and Wickwright pushes Feilim aside as he reaches for the message in the crow's beak. "Feilim, take the bird," he demands.
"What?" Feilim asks incredulously, dusting himself off.
"You can either take the bird or leave this wagon, but the letter is for me," Wickwright asserts, reaching out for the crow gingerly. Putting up a hand when Feilim protests that he can't possibly know that, he points at the door. Reluctantly, Feilim gets up and attempts to get his hands around the bird, who dances out of his way until finally he dives for it, catching it and causing it to drop the parchment it carries. The ribbon around it slips and it flutters onto Wickwright's desk, in front of Hopkin, who nervously backs away from it. He and his Grimm have been here before. "Now leave," Wickwright orders Feilim.
"Make me," Feilim mutters mutinously, collapsing on Wickwright's bed with the crow in his arms. For a moment Wickwright looks like he's going to try, but Feilim is far younger and stronger, and is a Finch boy anyway, so instead he merely snorts. "Too much of the Finch in you," he grumbles, and opens the parchment.
"Wickwright, no!" Hopkin cries, but it's too late. A laugh comes from the parchment as it disintegrates between his Grimm's fingers, and Hopkin stares, horrified but unable to look away. The same voice as the first time. The one that started their misery, the one that haunted Hopkin's mind with doubt, more doubt than Wickwright could completely dispel.
"What a successful trial this was. I must say, all you Grimms are a troubled lot."
Feilim looks more shocked than Hopkin, clutching the crow so tightly that it caws in protest and struggles to free itself. Wickwright's jaw is tightly clenched as his fists, but the voice presses on. The ribbon, lying on the desk, now liquefies at Hopkin's feet, and he scrambles to get out of the way until he sees it's making a patch for Wickwright. Remembering how Wickwright was plagued and forgetting his own promise to himself, he grabs at it, but it evades him and he can only watch as it begins to change shape.
"You see, I've learned something from all of you, what two-thousand and growing lot there are, and what few hundred have seemingly passed my trials alive. This aura, this Furvus Elixir, it's truly what you make of it... and I've been deceived all along, and so have you. Welcome to my world of smoke and mirrors."
Both the book and the boy recognize the nightmarish grotesque taking shape from her apparel, but only Wickwright recognizes her for her form.
"Ariadne?" he murmurs, staring at her like a possessed man.
"Do you know this woman, Uncle?" Feilim interrogates, horrified by the company Wickwright keeps.
"Don't look, Wickwright, run, please, Wickwright, remember your promise to Coyotl Coyotl!" Hopkin begs, but Wickwright is past hearing both of them. His attention is only for the disgusting shape of the plague woman in front of him, both beautiful and deadly, the form of a woman he once knew wrapped in the garments of a Bunting. She opens her hands, and a bunting bird and a finch chirp in them merrily. Slithering herself down from the desk, she drops the birds, and they fall to the ground, dead, causing Wickwright to wince, but not move. Feilim clutches the crow closer, and Hopkin can't blame him. He never imagined that a crow could be the most comforting bird present in Wickwright's wagon before.
Quietly, gingerly, the woman takes Wickwright's hands and he offers no resistance. "Ariadne, I-" She stops him, smiling and tilting her head to the side.
"You've shamed Finch already, why not shame as he had?"
All three know to what she refers, even without the birds making it obvious, and Feilim jumps up, furious, clutching the crow even more tightly and causing it to squawk and flap madly. The figure takes no note of him, but instead, her attention is on Wickwright. Dropping his hands, she backs away and reaches out for him before vanishing in a flurry of buntings and finches. Just before she disappears, she turns one last time and shrugs her shoulders.
"Hotly love and love shamelessly, Finch, for you're barely a Finch man and rarely a Jawbone man."
She looks up and disappears, melting into a pile of black liquid.
The silence that encompasses the wagon is choking, and then Hopkin manages to choke, "W-Wickwright Finch-"
Wickwright is staring at his hands.
"Wickwright Finch, who prattles in solitude!" Hopkin manages again, slowly pulling himself together. "Once there were two birds of a feather who flew across Panymium."
A hollow noise comes from Wickwright's throat, which grows into a groan, which grows into a movement, and he lunges for his desk, tearing the drawer open, and taking a strange black vial out of it. Forcing the shutters open the rest of the way, he hurls it into the night without a second thought. Then the old man crumples in his chair, where the spectral Bunting woman had been so recently sitting. Quietly, Hopkin moved closer to his Grimm's head. "What comes next," he murmurs consolingly. "Wickwright, what comes next."
"...Uncle," Feilim finally manages, eyes glued on the black puddle on the floor, "What have you done."
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Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 8:12 am
META SOLO
birds of a feather
April 27, 1411
Feilim and Hopkin sit outside the wagon, Hopkin on his shoulder, the crow in his arms. The chilly early spring night makes Hopkin's bronze skin cold to the touch and hard for him to move as he stammeringly tries to explain everything to Feilim while Wickwright is incapacitated. He is nervous- just moments earlier Feilim was dropping him to the floor and denying his legitimacy. But Feilim doesn't complain and doesn't interrupt, just listens, nestling the crow to his chest like some kind of eerie security blanket. Hopkin goes back to the beginning, to the first crow that came to them and works his way forward- through plague and pestilence, science and metamorphosis, and finally he comes to Rosstead, and then to Feilim, who he eyes anxiously as the sun rises pink over the Panymese sky.
"Okay," Feilim says, watching the sky turn light. "Say I believe you."
"I believe you," Hopkin obliges.
"No, suppose that I believe you," Feilim corrects, trying to get used to how Hopkin works. "Who's doing this?"
"The Obscuvians," Hopkin replies instantaneously. "Wickwright has informed me that it's the Obscuvians."
"Why?"
Hopkin hesitates, but remembers, "They want to seize possession of me or else destroy me. Wickwright was not completely clear on that point, but the first crow's message certainly suggested that they desired Wickwright to join them."
"So what about that other Obscuvian..." Feilim snaps his fingers as he tries to come up with the name.
"Dorian Arelgren," Hopkin offers helpfully.
"Dorian Arelgren!" Feilim agrees, clapping his hands. "Why did he do what he did?"
"Lettie Arelgren requested it of him when she saw me."
"But you looked like a human, right?"
Hopkin nodded nervously. "Lettie Arelgren simply knew it was me. She's terribly astute," he defended, "Because she's terribly compassionate!"
Feilim laughs and raises his hands, fending off the adamant response. "Okay. Lettie is terribly astute and terribly compassionate, and Dorian is terribly good at listening to her. But why did she stop him from attacking you?"
"She likes me, she said," Hopkin offers shyly. "I am glad for it, because Lettie Arelgren is a very delicate and pretty thing, and that such a thing would find me aesthetically pleasing as well is very encouraging."
"Well, you come from a Jawbone Book," Feilim Finch points out, "If that isn't aesthetically pleasing, nothing is." Hopkin looks surprised, but nods in agreement, and they sit in silence for a moment, just watching the sun rise over the horizon.
"It's beautiful," Hopkin murmurs. "All the colours."
Feilim scratches his head. "I thought Uncle woke before dawn every morning. Don't you?"
"I never get tired of beautiful things, Feilim Finch," Hopkin insists. "Not for as long as I live." Sighing, Hopkin asks, "May I climb onto your head? I would like a better view." Feilim hesitates for a moment but agrees, and winces as Hopkin clambers up, using his hair to pull himself to the top. Perching on Feilim's head, Hopkin leans forward and Feilim stands up to help him out. Hopkin watches and Feilim processes everything he's heard, one smiling, the other frowning in concentration.
"You're not nearly what I expected a Plague to be," he says finally, after the sun has nearly risen.
"I'm a book first, Feilim Finch," Hopkin reminds him. "I'm a book and a boy and a plague, but the book part is what matters. For you and for me."
"If Uncle doesn't have a contribution, does he think they'll remove Finch from the Society?"
"I don't know what Wickwright thinks about that." Hopkin replies. "I only know that it's irrelevant, as I am a legitimate contribution."
"And you're okay with that?" Feilim demands. "The rest of your life in that dusty Collection, you know, when Wickwright retires that's where they put his contribution, in a dark old souterrain, like where I keep the family history."
"You're okay with becoming Finch for Wickwright," Hopkin retorts.
"It's what I was raised to do."
"I was raised to be a Jawbone Book," the plague replies simply.
"Doesn't it scare you, though?" Feilim asks frustratedly. "You have no idea what will happen. What they might decide for you. If you end up like a normal contribution, that means no more sunrise or anything. Nothing will be illuminated for you!"
Hopkin pauses and thinks, moving his mouth silently for a moment. "The only thing that really terrifies me about what may become of me, Feilim Finch," he decides at last, "Is if they look at me and say no."
Feilim massages his temples. "Me too, Hopkin. Me too."
The two unsure boys sit on the step like nervous birds and stew in their troubles while the sun rises. The sky turns pinks and oranges and finally, a faint, weak sort of blue, and a call comes from the wagon. Wickwright is ready to speak. Feilim gets up to go in, but pauses before he opens the door.
"You really are part boy, aren't you," he asks, hand on the entryway.
Hopkin bites his lip, because he's not really sure about the boy part, but says, "Yes, I suppose I am."
"Well, I won't let them put you in the souterrain. If you get accepted, if I even become a Finch, you won't live in the dark. Not while I'm a Jawbone Man. I don't care if you're not afraid of it, it isn't right."
"Thank you, Feilim Finch," Hopkin says solemnly. There are plenty of 'if's in that sentence, but he and Feilim live on 'if's. 'If' is better than 'no', and that fear is one thing that they have in common. A sort of bond, shaky though it is. Feilim looks like he wants to say more, but shakes his head, and with that, the three head into the wagon, boy, book, and bird.
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Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 8:14 am
META SOLO
antagonist
April 27th, 1411
Wickwright is plagued by memories as he prepares to leave.
"Do you love me?" asks a girl in his father's study, and in that place of dust and books and quiet truths, he leans over her head on the floor, his hair still brown and shaggy with youth and murmurs yeses, only half believing them himself but leading her to think with every fiber of her being that, in that place of dust and truth, this is a promise of something more than he can give. The study is gone now, destroyed, but the truths remain in the souterrain, and that is where the man showed up, the man who must have sent Ariadne back to him. Perhaps it was fate, or destiny, or whatever it is the homines leves believe in that made it so. Perhaps the dusty old books remember those empty words whispered in that quiet study, perhaps those lies have echoed through the hallways of time only now, like lost dogs finding their master once more. Perhaps his father's books remember his shame more readily than his own does, his own book asleep in the bag slung round his shoulder, utterly trusting the man who carries him to be pure.
Hopkin is plagued by Finch as he wanders the flat world.
Their roles are reversed, and for once it is Finch asking the questions and Hopkin reluctant to answer. There is very little that he wishes to relive that has occurred over the past few weeks, and he has just recently had to relate it to Feilim Finch. However, he is Wickwright's book, and so he answers each and every question, as difficult as it is. It is easier than it was for Feilim, as all Finch asks about is the Bunting woman, the grotesque that attacked, everything about her, Finch wants to know it all. At first it is painful, then it is merely tedious, and as Hopkin talks, the encounter loses its emotional edge and becomes cold fact. Just another story: Once in Wickwright's wagon, a grotesque, beautiful woman came calling. But stories have a peculiar power in Hopkin's head, one that he isn't fully aware of, though it is the inside of his own mind, and as the story solidifies in his mind, something stirs at the edge of his consciousness. It is only noticeable by the melody he begins to hum to himself, an antsy, jealous, familiar little tune. Finch is too intent on his answers to hear, Hopkin is too preoccupied to notice. Only the flat world takes heed of it, and quietly shifts itself accordingly.
Feilim is plagued by doubt as he watches his uncle.
This is a foolish journey, even for a Finch, and Feilim knows it. He saw O'Neill's face when he spoke to of Wickwright's plague, knows what Wickwright has failed to mention: O'Neill does not approve. It is possible that no one will. And more than that, he has seen the woman, the Bunting woman, and heard the stories. There are some people who would kill to get their hands on Hopkin from the sound of it, and he isn't sure any Finch man can fly fast enough to escape that. But if anything, it seems to make Wickwright only more determined, and as Feilim watches Wickwright leave him again, he feels a bitter burden on his shoulders. Again, just like after every visit, there is no "Come with me." There is no offer and no sign that his uncle, the man whose shoes he is supposed to fill, cares for him even any more than he cares for a damned Plague. O'Neill visits him more than Wickwright. O'Neill feels more like his uncle than his uncle does. Wickwright has told him that if Hopkin does not get accepted, Feilim cannot be a Finch man. He has said it's for his own good. But after years of neglect, Feilim doubts that Wickwright has ever done a thing solely for his sad-faced nephew's own good. The wagon jolts into life and Feilim watches it leave, the tame crow from the night before brooding on his shoulder. He has been told that this is for his own benefit, that Hopkin is a contribution and must be accepted for the Finch family line to continue. But Hopkin is more than that. Hopkin is part boy, and as a boy who has been long neglected, Feilim is bitterly jealous.
Boy, book, and man part ways once more, each haunted by their own antagonists, Bunting's damage well and truly done.
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Posted: Wed May 04, 2011 10:35 am
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Posted: Mon May 09, 2011 10:24 am
There is no lesson that night.
The two lay in silence, Wickwright with his back to the book bag, Hopkin facing his Grimm because his gaze never, ever lingers long on anything else. He has spent his life taking cues from Wickwright, or his lives, or his life and his unlife, however one would describe the book-life and plague-life he has had the experience of leading. But this time, perhaps, he looked away too long. He got lost, he went out and did something on his own, and what it got him was trouble and fear and all sorts of unpleasant, stomach knotting things, but more than that, it got him knowledge. This he knows: He does not want to be anywhere where his author is not.
Nor can he bear his author ignoring him. "Wickwright," he whispers plaintively, bandaged, eyeless head somehow staring at the old man's back. There is no reply, and so he gamely tries again. "Wickwright Finch."
Nothing.
"Do you hate me, Wickwright Finch," asks Hopkin. His voice is quite small.
Nothing.
Hopkin whimpers and hugs his knees, the metal skin cold under his burlap night clothes now that they approach Shyregoad. They have been running so long, so fast and seen such terrible sights all month, and Hopkin is tired of it. He wishes that they could stop running and start talking, that he could apologize, that could say he hadn't meant to outrun his own author that day with Toshua Green and the pumpkin of Toshua Green. The more he sees of the world, the more Hopkin is convinced that the wide world is not something he can live in alone. The flat world is much simpler, needs no Wickwright, because it is Wickwright, the world Wickwright built. This new world is the world that built Wickwright, and living in it with all the terrible sentience a Plague's body grants him, Hopkin wishes he was elsewhere. Sleep and the flat world and escape beckon seductively, but Wickwright's back is to him and if he wakes in the morning and that back is still to him, Hopkin thinks he is like to die.
"I know I disobeyed you. I know if I am destroyed, we are both ruined," Hopkin begins hesitantly.
Silence.
"I had to save that pumpkin. It was a Plague, Wickwright Finch. Like I am. And I do not know how I knew it or if I even knew it at all, but it was something I had to do." He draws his mouth into a thin, nervous grimace, composing his next thoughts. "A-and, it was wrong. But I do not regret it."
Beat.
"Please say something, Wickwright Finch."
This time, his Finch turns to him, the moonlight illuminating his silvery hair.
"I don't care." he says flatly. "I don't care about the pumpkin, Hopkin. Or the koi, or the horn, or the cocoa. I do not care about a single Plague we have met in our travels, not a one of them. I tolerate them and appreciate them, but Hopkin, if you dangled them over a ledge, I would not stop to save them. They are someone else's burden."
Hopkin looks horrified, opening and closing his mouth soundlessly, trying to think of what to say. "Lettie- Chayele-"
"You are the only Plague that I care about, Hopkin." Wickwright states firmly. "The only Plague I will ever care about. My Plague."
"My book."
He looks like he wants to say more, but there's that specter that looms between them, the word 'Plague' has been spoken too often and too soon and it serves as a reminder. Book is no longer totally apt, and Hopkin is no longer totally his. Wickwright grunts, maybe regretfully, maybe just sleepily, but when he lays down this time, he is facing the book bag.
"Go to sleep, you daft little thing. I don't hate you, but if you run off again, by the bone, I will string you up by the ears you do not have." Leaving Hopkin to wonder how that could even be possible, Wickwright drifts off, unable to bring himself to say more. But for once, Hopkin isn't thinking about Wickwright's nonsensical sayings or having headaches over how words work. He is thinking about all the beautiful and delicate Plagues they have met, Plagues that he always considered to be far more pleasing than him.
"You are the only Plague that I care about, Hopkin."
In the dark, Hopkin smiles a greedy grin and enters his flat world in bliss.
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Posted: Mon May 09, 2011 10:25 am
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Posted: Sun May 29, 2011 7:38 am
"She simply fails to understand anything, Wickwright," Hopkin complains, clutching his head and looking at his Grimm. "I'm worried that perhaps I'm teaching her wrong, I've never taught anyone before." He thought about the statement, and hastily added, "Not as a boy, at least. Chayele Meschke cannot read the words on my pages and I do not know which pages to recite. Please instruct me so she might understand."
Wickwright Finch glances up from his own writing and smiles exasperatedly at his Plague. "Hopkin, it's been but two days."
"And still she cannot grasp the simplest concepts!" Hopkin moans.
"It takes people who aren't book boys more than two days, Hopkin. I don't suppose that you could hum me a jig?"
"No," Hopkin replies worriedly. "Should I?"
"No," Wickwright insists. "That talent belongs to Chayele, and even though you could define a jig for me and tell me jigging stories and regale me with the origins or local jigs, it would take you far longer than two days to compose one, whereas she could just hum a reel away."
"But writing is like... Like breathing, Wickwright."
"To you."
"So I should be able to compel her to understand just how simple it is," Hopkin insists. I have mastered words far better than her, what use are they if I cannot use them to compel her to master them as well?"
Wickwright sighs and puts down his quill. "Hopkin, you were not born knowing how to write and read."
Hopkin looks distressed. "But I assure you that I was. If you say so, I will doubt myself, and I wish you wouldn't say nonsensical things to make me doubt myself, I-"
"It took you thirty years to learn, Hopkin."
Hopkin pauses. "What?"
"Thirty years I spent writing you. No one has written Chayele, she was crafted in a different way, with things other than words. With whatever motivates men to lift their voices in song. Is that as useful? Of course not, not to our purposes. Is she less intelligent? Perhaps, but remember that you are a book boy, and thus far more intelligent than most of Panymium, whether you act like a petulant child or not." He quirks an eyebrow at Hopkin over the letter he is writing, and Hopkin clenches his little bronze fists, suddenly very interested in the wood grain of the desk rather than in meeting Wickwright's gaze. "Do you understand, Hopkin?" asks his Grimm.
"I understand everything which you teach me," Hopkin replies quietly. "Unlike Chayele Meschke, who-"
"Enough. Teaching requires patience, Hopkin."
"I have patience."
"Demonstrate to me your patience."
Hopkin dislikes being treated like a child and his face illuminates brighter with embarrassment, the bandages glowing at their edges as the light underneath shines through the cracks. "I simply estimated that it would take less time to teach. I dislike being wrong, Wickwright. I dearly value Chayele Meschke, but she is making me incorrect, and it is terribly unkind of her. I do wish she would be more obliging to me, I am being as obliging as possible to her!" He stamps his foot in frustration and feels immediately guilty afterwards, eyes flashing to where he left Chayele. Lowering his voice, he adds, "But I am a book, and so I will not cease to instruct her until she pushes me away or she has learned what I have to tell her."
"Good boy. Book-boy. Go enlighten the world as I intended you to," Wickwright replies with the faintest hint of a smile. "You are only truly wrong when you give up on that which you think is necessary, that's the Finch creed."
"That's why you get into so much trouble," Hopkin replies as he leaves, and receives a jab with the quill for his pains.
"You're a cheeky devil, my little book boy."
"I hold no grudge for it, I simply understand."
They exchange smiles and Hopkin leaves, returning to the thankless task of teaching Chayele Meschke the understanding which he does not remember having learned himself.
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Posted: Sun May 29, 2011 7:39 am
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Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2011 7:05 am
The wagon is cold as ice, slippery and foreign in the Shyregoadian chill. But it is Wickwright's wagon, and it is found, and as Wickwright sorts what is and is not there, Hopkin watches carefully, helping him remember. Hopkin remembers everything that had been there, and where it went, and he is very concerned that nothing changes as they repair what has been damaged. They have been through trying times over the last few days, but reorganizing the wagon is like rebuilding their wide world- with every piece of parchment in its proper place, the paper Plague can feel his peace of mind return. And this is something that he can assist in, too. Nobody can remember details quite as well as he can, and he is proud of every item he recalls. No other excito can help with this task but him and he hopes that it proves some degree of his worth to Wickwright. He is still a useful book, and furthermore, this is something he could have never even done as a book. In some ways he is a thing ruined, but in others, he is far improved.
"The terrible stuffed raccoon from Bunting goes behind the blue trunk," Hopkin offers helpfully, gesturing as Wickwright grunts with the exertion of lifting it. "No, no, it was facing the other way. Oh! You're walking away, no, please do change it back." With a sigh, his Grimm trudges over and picks up the terrible heirloom raccoon, moving it to face the opposite direction.
"Hopkin, we still have too much more to replace to worry about whether the raccoon is correctly aligned," he admonishes, looking up at his Plague with a tired frown.
"It's important," insists Hopkin. "Once things are back the way they were, we will be all right again."
"Finches are usually all right," Wickwright reassures wryly, "We'll bounce back soon enough."
"We will have more space for bouncing if the wagon is as it was before," Hopkin replies, but something is preoccupying him now, and he sits on an overturned inkwell (thankfully empty, ink being a terrible thing to waste). It takes a moment, but as Hopkin stops directing him, Wickwright looks up from the raccoon, aware of a change in the wind, or at least a change in his Plague. He pushes the raccoon sharply to the left, and when Hopkin doesn't notice, circumnavigates it and sits at the writing desk the bronze boy is perched on.
"Is something on your mind, book boy?"
"I do not feel very much like bouncing at all, Wickwright Finch," Hopkin admits glumly. "I do not think that things can go back to the way they once were, for I did not know Dragomir Meschke was your son before. That is a very important thing, and it changes much." He hesitates, wringing his cold, bronze hands with some difficulty- Shyregoad is hard to visit, as it makes his limbs awfully stiff. "Too much, perhaps. Wickwright, Dragomir Meschke being your son makes very little sense, and all day and last night, I was most desirous of your explanation of these events so that you might make things clear for me. Why is Dragomir Meschke your son?"
Wickwright runs a hand through his receding hairline and thinks for a moment. Coming to a decision, he announces, "Hopkin, that was a lie."
Hopkin's mouth moves noiselessly. If he had eyes, he would look shocked, but as he is, he merely looks like a fish gulping for air, more like the koi Plague than the book Plague he really is. "Why would you say such a thing, Wickwright Finch?" he demands. "Why would you propagate a l- an untruth?"
"It was a choice I made based on three facts. One, the girl Maeve is not a Jawbone Man, and thus, by our codes, is a person to whom I may lie without fear of punishment. Two, Meschke made the suggestion, and playing along with Meschke, who had the money we did not at the time, seemed prudent. And three, we needed to hire help, and help is much more likely to come to a family than two strange men traveling alone together in an isolated part of Shyregoad. We looked suspicious, Hopkin. The less suspicious we looked, the more quickly we would have reclaimed the wagon. At the time, a lie seemed prudent, and that, I promise you, is the truth."
"Is it?" Hopkin wails. "How can I be sure? Your logic is sound, and yet, I, like Maeve LaChance, am no Jawbone Man. I am just as susceptible as she is by this rationale, and I am most discomforted by the idea."
"You are no Jawbone Man, this is true," Wickwright murmurs, "But Hopkin, you are my contribution. Consider that you are better than a Jawbone Man."
Hopkin pauses. "Better," he repeats hopefully.
"You are a contribution, Hopkin. I am a disciple of Truth, but you are something I cannot be, part of the True World. Lying to you would serve me no purpose other than to corrupt you. My contribution must be true. Does this logic make sense to you? You are true for both of us, and I am true for you. As I lie, it is to allow you to be true, because this is not the True World, and we who can do so must live by the rules of the world we are in. And as you learn the truth, it is because you must be what I cannot be in this world, so that when I die, the part of me that is true will be preserved."
"I understand, Wickwright," Hopkin replies. The explanation washes away his concerns, and, much like the process of reorganizing the wagon, Hopkin feels catharsis from it. He is being protected by Wickwright, and as his Grimm gets up to re-re-align the dreadful raccoon, Hopkin is pleased and warm in the chill Shyregoadian weather. He resolves to do his best for his author and live by the laws of the True World to give Wickwright a reason to protect him in this clouded one.
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Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2011 7:06 am
When Hopkin wakes in the flat world, it is as cold as the snowy land he fell asleep in. He wakes to snowflakes flying across the flat sky, their flight traced after them in ancient patterns. He pushes himself to his feet, his limbs no longer creaky in the world in his head. Looking up, he sees the wagon he has spent all day fixing. It is pristine inside, unlike its state in the wide world, but this is not an inaccuracy of his mind. This is how the wagon should be. It is the wide world that is wrong.
He notes disappointedly that there is no Wickwright, but as if summoned, Finch appears, lazily glancing down at Hopkin. "Oh!" exclaims the Plague, causing the man above him to smile. "Finch, I did not see you at first."
"What's this?" Finch asks, glancing around the wagon, causing Hopkin to look up in surprise.
"My author's wagon. Finch, do you not know?"
"I am Finch," corrects the Jawbone Man. "I am not Wickwright, and my illustrious descendant did not write himself into his own book, little Source. Everything to do with him here is new, save the inscription at the end of the world. You have illuminated his influence on this world, just as he illuminated this world through you." A pause. "It is very strange, what you do, little Source. You make him so personal." He runs his hand along the writing desk and picks up a bottle of ink, spilling it down his hands, where it writes familiar stories as it comes in contact with a character it knows very well indeed. Hopkin glances at the words and sees fables from every Finch man on his companion's arms, but as the drops drip onto the wagon floor, they tell tales only of the Finch who wrote him. "I have often wondered what this wide world you speak of so frequently is like. Try as I may, I am not so personal as your author," Finch says distantly. "I remember nothing but what is written. What you tell me, I can only picture."
"That is no great tragedy," Hopkin reassures Finch quickly as they walk through the wagon, "The wide world is sometimes beautiful, but more often strange and dangerous. Did you know, Finch, that people in the wide world can sometimes be so vast or deep that even Wickwright Finch cannot reach behind them easily at all?"
Finch replies that he did not.
"It is most unfortunately true. In fact, though the wide world is beautiful, I feel it is much better to live in this flat one and see what comes from the wide world through me." He points to a trunk and Finch opens it, lifting Hopkin up to see. "Wickwright says that I must live in the true world for him, and since he is not in this world and it is so perfectly flat, I think that it must be this world he means. I cannot imagine a world truer than this one, it is precisely what I picture when I picture what the world should be."
"But this world keeps growing," Finch says, rummaging through the trunk and pulling out inks and feathers and rocks, then finally Hopkin's book bag, which Hopkin grasps at and he sets aside. "If you keep adding things from the wide world, how can this world be true? Not, mind, that I'm complaining."
Hopkin hesitates.
"The true world is still being made," he said finally. "Every Jawbone Man knows that for the true world to be complete, we must examine every object for its multitudinous truths. The more truths we examine, the wider this world grows, and that is why every truth Wickwright has examined is in this world, and why every truth I examine is in this world. We must stay in the wide world to build it for you, Wickwright to protect me, and I to observe."
"And all the truth to examine is in the wide world," Finch repeats, looking around the wagon.
"That is how it seems," Hopkin affirms dutifully as he re-organizes his now pleasingly flat collection of colorful objects.
"Will I ever see it for myself?"
"See it through me, Finch, I will see all the truth for all of us." Hopkin assures cheerfully. Finch changes the subject and they speak of little things, feathers and stones and the brightness of the illuminated flat world until Hopkin awakens to the sound of his creaking limbs in the cold wide world and the untidy, recently overturned wagon that is slightly wrong. He lays in the book bag for a moment as Wickwright stirs, smiling to himself. He's figured out what Wickwright means this time, he's figured something for himself. The flat world is not like the world Wickwright calls Our Wide World because Wickwright cannot be part of it, and the only world Wickwright has told him he cannot be part of is the true world. Hopkin has found the truth, and it turns out that he had never lost it.
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Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2011 7:07 am
[rp with shortest son here]
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Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2011 7:09 am
MORE SOLOS WHY THE HELL NOT
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Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2011 7:11 am
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Posted: Thu Aug 04, 2011 7:11 pm
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Posted: Mon Sep 12, 2011 12:09 pm
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Reply
